These are from our hike in the woods a couple of weekends ago with our friends Anne and Billie. They brought their wonderful dogs, Australian shepherds, who had a wonderful time smelling everything. We had Dave's overnight waffles from Mark Bittman, and not-too-burned bacon (that's 'cause Dave was watching over it.)
In the group shot we are on the Fairy Rock that sits at the intersection of the Coles Meadow and Marian Street trails. Lily is wearing her Bement headband. Yesterday they shopped at the Bement school store and she bought a bumper sticker, a license plate frame, and a pencil, all with "Bement" on it. Gotta love that school spirit! (Whenever I start to get cynical about this stuff I consider the alternative, as in, she hates school. I much prefer the pride of bumper stickers and pencils.)
The one of Dave is taken at the dam, about two miles (?) a mile and a half (?) through the woods from our house. Isn't he handsome!
We're arguing about the distance; Dave thinks a mile, but it takes us at least an hour to walk to the lake and back. The bird blind is 45 minutes+ round trip, and I think it's still a good half mile from the dam. Can you assume a 20-minute mile on a mostly flat hike in the woods? Yes, it's got some up and down, but then, so does New York City, where the rule of thumb is that it takes a minute to walk a block running north and south (and twice as long for an east-west block, the avenues) and it's 20 of those blocks to a mile, so that's a 20-minute mile pace.
Of course, those are Manhattan numbers, but they mostly hold up in Brooklyn, too. You might have to slow down in the woods to get around a rock or something, but again, between the tourists and the strollers, that holds true in New York, too.
Tasos, we need your GPS!
PS from Dave: Our friend Lonnie was quoted in the paper last week about the mayoral election, and Chris, a kid from D&D, is on the cover of the Living Section today in an article about Big Brothers. We live in Small Town, USA.
On the distance issues, my two cents, for whatever they're worth....
ReplyDeleteCent the First: If your rate is 1 mile=20 minutes, try walking at that type of pace for 20 minutes and check where you are and do the same for as long as you like. I bet you'll wind up with a good idea of where the miles are. Remember that the paths aren't quite straight, so you're estimating the "path distance," not the straight line distance.
Cent the Second: My estimate for NYC walking is 1 minute per short block and 4 minutes per long block.
Cheers to all of you!